


when the song ends

by sapph0



Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Inspired by The Song of Achilles, M/M, achilles being a Dramatic Bitch (tm), this was a draft for a school assignment that ran wild lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19321288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapph0/pseuds/sapph0
Summary: Achilles died when Hector had driven a spear through Patroclus, his Patroclus’, heart, Achilles’ armor split in halves and his helmet long gone revealing Patroclus’ beautiful ebony hair and walnut-shell skin stained the color of wine. The scene looked like it had crawled out of a story the boys had been told by Chiron in simpler days, dust kicked up from the kiln-dried earth, the saffron-robed dawn approaching hesitantly as if Helios himself hadn’t wanted to witness the bloodshed either.





	when the song ends

Achilles is restless.

That much is not new, for Achilles has always been somewhat restless, but _this_ feeling of restlessness is new, because it isn’t just the natural, youthful energy the warrior carried with him as a boy everywhere like a hound carries a dead sparrow, or the need to channel his multitude of fears into the battlefield, hours turned into what seemed like minutes by crimson and bronze when he was almost a man, but a _truer_ sense of restlessness.

Despite the softness of the grass on which he lays, Achilles can’t sleep. Maybe that’s because Achilles is dead, or maybe it’s because the war still lives on inside him, raging day after day in a symphony of screams, all that pain and turmoil trapped inside his skull forever and always.

But Achilles knows that even though these things may have a hand his his restlessness they are not the ultimate cause, just as the arrow to his heel may have killed him, but he died long before it pierced his skin.

Achilles died when Hector had driven a spear through Patroclus, _his Patroclus’_ , heart, Achilles’ armor split in halves and his helmet long gone revealing Patroclus’ beautiful ebony hair and walnut-shell skin stained the color of wine. The scene looked like it had crawled out of a story the boys had been told by Chiron in simpler days, dust kicked up from the kiln-dried earth, the saffron-robed dawn approaching hesitantly as if Helios himself hadn’t wanted to witness the bloodshed either.

Achilles was finally allowed passage into the Underworld when an arrow split his soft tendon and blood ran red from his foot. He died content.

Except his fellow men, _his own son_ , had not given Patroclus a proper burial.

And what was the point of  heaven if you couldn’t spend eternity with the one you loved?

Achilles longs for Asphodel, for no amount of pomegranates and sunshine could ever turn this into a utopia.

Achilles longs to _forget_.

Sometimes he thought that maybe, just maybe, Elysium was just an extension of the fields of punishment, built for the poor souls like himself who could torture themselves without any godly intervention.

Patroclus would’ve said that Achilles was just being overdramatic, that maybe not everything is built for him. He’d say that life just happens and that we have to happen with it, whether we want to or not. And then Patroclus would get that look in his eye, the one he thought that Achilles never noticed, the look that broke his heart.

Achilles never quite knew what that look meant.

Achilles never asked.  

Achilles never did a lot of things.

He was brought out of the shackles of his mind when a beam of light shone across the field. Another benevolent soul lost, or another good soldier gone. Achilles wanted so badly to feel apathy towards this soul - He had spent the previous weeks rushing in the direction of the lights, praying that they were his love, only to find another. He had seen so many faces, faces of innocent children who died too young, faces of old comrades telling harrowing tales of their journeys home, faces of enemies.

When Agamemnon had appeared before Patroclus, Achilles had known for sure then that this was indeed hell.

But this time would be different. Achilles knew now that he had to rest knowing that Patroclus would watch the world go by up above, never descending into the fields of Elysium, and he would rest restlessly with this knowledge.

But alas, a bit of rebellious hope overcame all common and uncommon sense that Achilles had, and he turned towards were the beam had been. The false sun above the vast field of souls began to retreat, and Achilles began to walk.

Twilight came and went as he arrived. What Achilles saw upon his arrival was non other than a head of ebony hair attached to walnut-shell skin.

 

 _IN THE DARKNESS,_ **_two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun._ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic! ever! wow. thanks dr. [redacted] for inspiring me to write this with your assignment, but also no thank you because you're a bad teacher


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